Old apps, new faces: More stuff that looks different in OS X Yosemite

Gallery: Apps and features that have been Yosemite-ized, but not changed.

In our preview of the OS X Yosemite beta today, we focused mostly on the OS-wide changes to the user interface and the new features of a few built-in apps. As happened in the transition from iOS 6 to iOS 7, though, there are plenty of other applications in Yosemite that still work like they did in Mavericks, just with a fresh coat of paint.

We've collected a few different representative examples in the photo gallery below—some of these designs completely rethink the way the original application looked (Game Center). Some of them look basically the same but compress the UI or move buttons to different places to make existing features more accessible (Maps, Preview). Still others are just the same apps with different colors (Notes).

The one class of app that remains essentially the same as before (at least of this writing) are the things in the Utilities folder, many of which even use the same "old-style" glassy icons as before. Only the Terminal and Activity Monitor get different icons at all, though the look of the apps don't change. The apps in Utilities are all, you know, utilities, so aesthetics aren't especially important there. Just know that Apple hasn't changed everything about the way Yosemite looks.

Andrew Cunningham

Mission Control in Mavericks. Everything is laid over top of this gray matte background, and the wallpaper on the active desktop shrinks to make room for the other Spaces at the top of the screen.

Andrew Cunningham

Mission Control in Mavericks. Everything is laid over top of this gray matte background, and the wallpaper on the active desktop shrinks to make room for the other Spaces at the top of the screen.

Andrew Cunningham

Mission Control in Yosemite just uses translucency to cover the active desktop instead. Also note that Dashboard is off by default.

Andrew Cunningham

The iOS-style Launchpad app launcher in Mavericks. This is one of the areas where older OS X versions used translucency too.

Andrew Cunningham

Launchpad in Yosemite. The Search box has gotten more obvious, but otherwise it's similar.

Andrew Cunningham

Reverting a file to a prior version in Mavericks.

Andrew Cunningham

Reverting in Yosemite. Surprisingly, while it softens the "space-y" background a bit, it still uses Mavericks' glassy buttons. You'll see why this is odd in a moment.

Andrew Cunningham

Time Machine in Mavericks. It shares an obvious visual connection with the UI for reverting individual files.

Andrew Cunningham

Time Machine in Yosemite. No glass buttons, no space background. Why not use this for reverting a file too?

Andrew Cunningham

System Preferences in Mavericks.

Andrew Cunningham

Many of these icons have changed. Many others have not (check the Leopard-era wallpaper on that Desktop & Screensaver icon). The "Profiles" icon isn't new to Yosemite, it's just something Apple added to the Yosemite loaner they gave us.

Andrew Cunningham

Game Center in Mavericks. One of the last bastions of skeuomorphism—and one of the most egregious.

Andrew Cunningham

Now, Game Center on OS X uses the same "colorful bubbles I guess" aesthetic as its iOS counterpart.

Andrew Cunningham

Maps in Mavericks.

Andrew Cunningham

Maps in Yosemite. The top bar has been made translucent and shrunk vertically to leave more space for what you're looking at.

Andrew Cunningham

Preview in Mavericks, with the editing toolbar exposed.

Andrew Cunningham

Preview in Yosemite with the same toolbar. As far as we can tell, Preview still does the same stuff, but there are more buttons on the top level of the toolbar now.

Andrew Cunningham

Note in Mavericks moved away from the lined yellow legal pad aesthetic in Lion and Mountain Lion, but it wasn't sure what it was moving toward.

Andrew Cunningham

In Yosemite it has been further lightened to bring it in line with the iOS version.

Andrew Cunningham

QuickTime in Mavericks.

Andrew Cunningham

QuickTime in Yosemite, given translucent controls. Here's one place where translucency causes some problems—can you read the text in the title bar? Because I sure can't.

Andrew Cunningham

If you clicked "About This Mac" in Mavericks, you'd get a little dialog box with the OS version and some basic system information that has looked basically the same way since the dawn of OS X. Click "More Info" and you see this window, with more detailed hardware and support info.

Andrew Cunningham

Yosemite has done away with that second step. Clicking "About This Mac" in the Apple menu now takes you directly to the more detailed window.

Andrew Cunningham

Font Book in Mavericks.

Andrew Cunningham

Now we're getting to the stuff that only has a light sprinkling of Yosemite on it. Translucent sidebar and lightened window UI both visit Font Book.

Andrew Cunningham

Contacts in Mavericks.

Andrew Cunningham

Contacts in Yosemite.

Andrew Cunningham

TextEdit in Mavericks.

TextEdit in Yosemite. Finally, we've gotten to the stuff that Yosemite barely changes at all.

Andrew Cunningham

Activity Monitor in Mavericks.

Andrew Cunningham

Activity Monitor in Yosemite. Like all other items in the Utilities folder, it has changed very little.

People will doubtlessly disagree with me, but I am quite liking the new look. While the translucency in the finder window side bar doesn't really make sense (won't make much difference to me, I rarely use the side bar and generally turn it off with the cmd-alt-t shortcut), I think the new schema looks fresh and new.

Both Apple and Microsoft try different things. I imagine that after all this time, it's really difficult to come up with something really better in every instance. But not all that we see here is fixed. A fair amount will likely still change.

I'll have to admit that I was one of those who thought "Oh, Gawd, please noooo...." when I heard that now even Apple was going for that "flattened with a hammer" look.

But seeing those screenshots side-by-side, I can actually see where they're going. The new design looks crisper, less cluttered, more focused. Actually, the old design tends to look a bit gaudy by comparison.

What's wrong with me? I'm writing this from my new Ubuntu 14.04 installation with the GNOME 3 environment installed on top of it, and as much as I loathed GNOME 3 at the beginning, I have to say ..... yeah, it's unusual, but it friggin' works for me.I briefly went back to the old GNOME 2 UI (gnome-session-flashback), and by comparison, it looks like a Yugo parked next to a Bentley Continental Supersports.

Maybe the sweeping change we see in GUIs isn't that horrible after all..... *scratches head*

(And sorry for bringing up Ubuntu in an Apple thread, but I hope you see my point :-) .)

I'm a little underwhelmed by the attention being placed on the UI and design aesthetics over that of what Yosemite brings under the hood as far as feature improvements. The previous article a few days ago was helpful in that regard. Screenshots of "teh pretty" get redundant after the first dozen or so.

But since Yosemite is free I suppose there isn't much impetus to articulate the value of why one should upgrade to the new OS.

I'm a little underwhelmed by the attention being placed on the UI and design aesthetics over that of what Yosemite brings under the hood as far as feature improvements. The previous article a few days ago was helpful in that regard. Screenshots of "teh pretty" get redundant after the first dozen or so.

But since Yosemite is free I suppose there isn't much impetus to articulate the value of why one should upgrade to the new OS.

I'm pretty sure that the answers you are looking for will be in the in-depth review once the OS itself is released.

I really like using Yosemite, and it makes sense when you are using it.

The transparencies are nice, but not over done. It's an evolutionary step, but mostly for the better. I love the better iCloud integration and everything just looks a little newer than before. I love the new Calculator (not shown, it's new to Preview 4) and the "dark theme" (which is still buggy, but you get the idea of what they want).

Overall it's not a bad update for a free update. I guess as time marches on, other apps will take on the Yosemite look and feel and the OS will feel more complete.

It does have that Ubuntu look, but done better (imho), though I do like the Ubuntu l&f too.

I think the title bars can look a little too small/squashed and lack that Apple "finish" that we're so used to, but that would be my only complaint.

For everyone saying it's too flat, remember when everyone was complaining that Apple's l&f was dated and not flat enough. I guess you can't please all the people, but overall I am very happy with it.

Also, for anyone wondering, the Asset Store in Unity3D works again in Preview 4 :-)

Couldn't most of this be done with a theme, really a whole new OS just to have different shades of white and flat boxes around everything. I thought Apple was suppose to "think different" and not be like the other guys. Sure looks like they are borrowing a lot from windows 8.

Better. But still much room for improvement. For some reason, I really dislike the spacing of the back/forward buttons in the Finder & Safari. Joining those buttons would look a lot slicker. And a slightly darker border around the light buttons certainly wouldn't hurt. The Game Center bubbles look dreadful - why flatten the whole UI and then have these big fugly Aqua-like elements?? Otherwise, most of the new icons are an improvement aside from the System Preferences and Mail icons.

There's an Extensions icon in the Yosemite System Preferences. Extensions used to mean something very specific in the pre-OS X days. I read the Ars article on iOS 8 extensions but I haven't heard anything about them in Yosemite. Can you dig into that a bit?

I agree with others about the sidebar translucency. Visually, I really like this translucency style, as used in e.g. the Control Center in iOS 7, but it seems like in OS X it would make a lot more sense to use it on title bars and other framing elements, which sit outside the window content. For example, reserve translucency for controls, menus and other ephemeral/non-content stuff, and make everything else opaque. The sidebar is more a part of the 'content' than the title bar is, so it just looks jarring underneath that opaque title bar.

[edit] I realised I am basically describing Windows Aero, which I think got the distinction right, though the way the glass looked there was pretty garish in comparison to Yosemite.

Agree with others about too much transparency/translucency at the expense of usability.

While I'm a fan of simple/clean/flat-ish look and not a big fan of over the top skeuomorphism, I don't really care that much what the latest style is. What I do care about is *usability*, and it's really a pisser when these UI designers forsake usability (and/or screen readability) for the latest UI fashion whims.

E.g. does the sidebar transparency help clarify the important information on screen? No! Does it make the information more difficult to read. Yes! That's the kind of b.s. that makes me want to reach through my screen and choke Craig Federighi (who wouldn't shut the fuck up about translucency in his Yosemite demo at WWDC).

I'll have to admit that I was one of those who thought "Oh, Gawd, please noooo...." when I heard that now even Apple was going for that "flattened with a hammer" look.

But seeing those screenshots side-by-side, I can actually see where they're going. The new design looks crisper, less cluttered, more focused. Actually, the old design tends to look a bit gaudy by comparison.

For a drastic example of where apple is going and has been going in general with OS X for some time, compare some of those screenshots to Tiger.

For everyone wondering about the translucency in the sidebar, I assume they replaced all the standard grey parts with translucency? Which tbh is way better than the alternative which I assume would have been just a flat monotone solid colour or worse still making everything white with separator lines like some of the mockups that were floating around before the reveal.

Andrew Cunningham / Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue.